This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2003-51117, filed on Jul. 24, 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive, and more particularly, to a flexible printed circuit (FPC) for electrically connecting a spindle motor of a disk drive to a printed circuit board (PCB), and a disk drive having the flexible printed circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
A disk drive, which is one type of data storage device, reads data from and writes data onto a disk. For example, in a hard disk drive (HDD), when reading data stored on a disk or writing data to the disk, read/write heads mounted to an actuator move to the desired location on a recording surface of the rotating disk. In this case, the read/write heads are lifted from the recording surface at a predetermined distance.
The HDD includes a spindle motor for rotating a disk, to which power is typically supplied through a flexible printed circuit (FPC). That is, the FPC serves to electrically connect the spindle motor installed within the disk drive with a printed circuit board (PCB) installed outside the disk drive for driving and controlling the spindle motor.
While being fixedly connected to the spindle motor, the FPC is not affixed directly to the PCB. Fixedly connecting the spindle motor with the PCB by the FPC makes it difficult to assemble the disk drive. Thus, a conventional disk drive has a separate connector to connect the FPC to the PCB. Examples of a connector used in an FPC for a spindle motor have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,705,868 and 6,528,914.
Since the conventional disk drive requires a separate connector in addition to the FPC for supplying power to the spindle motor, it has a complicated structure and high manufacturing costs and is difficult to assemble. In particular, a small disk drive typically carrying a 1-inch disk is used in portable electronic systems such as PDAs, camcorders, and MP3 players. Because the disk drive must be very compact and thin, it is hard to adopt a separate connector that takes up much space in addition to the FPC.